Listen, there's a hell of a good universe next door. let's go.

Vote of Confidence for my Generation

I know that, what with the 2015 election, the EU elections, the EU referendum, local elections and now GE2017, you’re probably sick of elections. Me, too.

You’re probably also fed up of people nagging you to go and vote. So, I’ll tell you what: you promise to vote, and I’ll promise not to nag you to.

Sound fair?

I get it. Honestly, I do. Like most 90’s kids (or millennials, as the media likes to call us) I was just becoming politically aware around the time that the banking crisis began. We missed the economic boom of the 90s and have known nothing but credit crunch, recession and austerity, and that doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon.

This is enough to make anyone feel pessimistic about the future, as it seems like it’ll contain nothing except more of what’s already come. So why bother?

Well, my fellow young adults, the thing is… we are young adults. The life expectancy of our generation is somewhere around eighty, so there’s plenty of time in which things could improve, and a lot of things that need improving. So we’d better get on it.

We know how fast things can change. The first, second and cold wars all happened in the space of a lifetime and politics (and the world) changed so much as to be unrecognisable in that time. We can make the world unrecognisable from the way it is today in the best way, but only if we try.

Another problem is a lack of people in who feel trustworthy in government. For some reason, political parties are fighting this campaign on buzzwords (“Let me be clear”, “Strong and stable,” etc. ad nauseam) rather than, you know… policies.

The leader is of course important, but not more so than the laws and budgets that they are going to have to pass. Besides, a person is always flawed (*cough* pig gate *cough*)but policies can be good, irrelevant of who is holding them up.

Apathy is a sign, generally, that something isn’t right. Something being wrong is a prompt for good people to try and put it right. The best way to try and do that is to vote, whichever way you think best, on Thursday 8th June.

If you don’t like any of them, just pick the lesser of two evils. It’s better to be ruled by someone who, even if they won’t fix the house you’re living in, at least won’t try to burn it down completely.

If you absolutely cannot vote for anyone, just spoil your ballot. The more people do that, the more the establishment will get the message that something is not right.

Every election, the older generations vote in their droves (as they are of course entitled to), but this has often led to younger generations’s views being under represented and young people are therefore pulled into/out of situations which they, as a whole, don’t want and will suffer over for years. This year could be the year that we take charge of our future.